Hello All: I notice  that when I look out, and up a tiny amount the terrain darkens quite a bit, making trees and forest extremely dark. If I look down with the viewpoint, the screen gets brighter and terrain is nice and clear and visible. Flying low and slow, this is getting to be a real pain for me. I have PTA and env texture, but I do not think these are causing the issue. I havd tried different PTA presets to no avail. I think this issue has always been happening to me through all versions of P3d, it just took me awhile to figure out what was going on.

 If I did not know better, I would say p3d is trying to simulate the brightness of looking up into sun, you lose night vision, so it darkens the ground. If so I would like to disable this feature somehow.

I am currently running p3d 4.4

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

-Stampee

1 hour ago, stampee said:

 If I did not know better, I would say p3d is trying to simulate the brightness of looking up into sun, you lose night vision, so it darkens the ground. If so I would like to disable this feature somehow.

Do you by chance have HDR turned on? I think that is where you need to go look in your P3D Lighting settings. Under HDR there is the Bloom setting which will do exactly what you are describing, the brightening and dimming of your "simulated eyes" going from a bright area to a darker area.

Also if you are using PTA presets, the one I am using has the recommended HDR settings in the Preset Comments. 

Interesting as I just did a full, fresh install of P3Dv4.4 and the first thing I noticed was the lighting.  Different from P3Dv3 and even different from P3Dv4.3 to 4.4, at least for me.  I see a more stark, harder contrast.  I noticed my trees seem darker.  I have been testing photoreal scenery and my first impression was "what's wrong with my photoreal"?  It appear a little washed out?

Not saying what I am seeing is bad it was just quite a "wake up" as I test different versions.  Maybe I just need to get used to it?  I do not have dynamic lighting or HDR on as I usually prefer to fly without them.  I did notice for me one of the smoothest flying/test experience and good FPS.  Currently locking mine at 30 but all subjective... just a very good first experience with 4.4.

Edited January 2, 20197 yr by Clutch Cargo

Evening Guys,

In the P3D config Graphics section, towards the bottom, is an entry MOON_PHASE_LIGHTING=TRUE. This makes the ambient night lighting dependent on the moon phase, so new moon= real dark and full=lots of ambient light. Set it to FALSE and P3D has a low level of ambient light all the time with more/less as the moon phases change. It also appears to me to make the sky much darker and the stars really visible.

Read this in another thread and it made the nights much better.

Edited January 2, 20197 yr by gsand

I was wondering why my clean install of 4.4 was darker tonight compared to a few days ago. I thought something was messed up. This info has saved me from going crazy. Great info to know. Thank you. 

Thank you for the response. I set bloom to 0 and that solved the issue for me.

-Stampee

 

Could just be the unfixed cloud shadow bug where you pan around and the shadows disappear making it brighter because now the sun is out vs when you pan another direction and the shadows reappear. I just landed in KDEN and this was happening constantly. 

 

Edit: just read you fixed it, so never mind! 😛

Edited January 4, 20197 yr by UAL4life

Nope, Sigh... light bloom off did not fix it. Its back again this flight as usual. Maybe it is that cloud bug you mentioned.

Odd if I am the only person noticing this issue.

-Stampee

Did anyone ever find a resolution to this? I have the same issue in P3DV5...

The abovementioned behavoir (HDR luminance adaptation) indeed tries to simulate the adaptation of human eye to bright light or shadow. To disable, you can use PTA (payware) or TomatoShade (freeware), and check the option "disable HDR luminance adaptation". Changing bloom to 0 in the P3D lighting settings migth help, too.